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Mark Muro, senior fellow and policy director of the Metropolitan Policy Program, discusses a plan to address the economic boom-bust cycle in states that rely heavily on “fracking” and how this plan can spur innovation, inclusive economic development, and de-carbonization in the U.S.

“Inclusive economic development is critical; it’s about widening the circle of prosperity to more people. An inclusive economy is a highly innovative one … one that provides many opportunities for building skills, and it is a sustainable one,” Muro says. “Sustainability is about smoothing the boom and bust cycles that are disruptive to people, communities, and the state economy. But it is also about a clean economy.”

Subscribe to the Brookings Cafeteria on iTunes, listen in all the usual places, and send feedback email to BCP@Brookings.edu.

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https://www.brookings.edu/on-the-record/wie-wollen-die-obamas-in-die-geschichte-eingehen/Wie wollen die Obamas in die Geschichte eingehen?http://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/171797174/0/brookingsrss/topics/usstatesandterritories~Wie-wollen-die-Obamas-in-die-Geschichte-eingehen/
Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000http://www.brookings.edu?p=158380&post_type=on-the-record&preview_id=158380Michelle Obama's masterful speech at the Democratic National Convention combined the personal and the political, touching on women's solidarity and the history of race in the United States.

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Michelle Obama's masterful speech at the Democratic National Convention combined the personal and the political, touching on women's solidarity and the history of race in the United States.

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With the GOP convention now in the electoral rearview mirror, attention is pivoting quickly from Ohio to Pennsylvania as the Democrats kick off their own nominating convention in Philadelphia.

Although it has voted Democratic in the last six presidential elections, political analysts have historically regarded the Keystone State as a swing state. FiveThirtyEight’s latest general election forecast projects a 46 percent vote share for Hillary Clinton, versus just under 44 percent for Donald Trump, making it the sixth-most competitive state. Pennsylvania also features what is shaping up to be a tight Senate race between incumbent Republican Pat Toomey and Democratic nominee Katie McGinty. Thus, it is useful to see how the state’s voters might view the condition of the economy, which could very well influence turnout levels and candidate preferences amid close contests this November.

Pennsylvania’s metropolitan economy

The economic perspectives of Pennsylvanians are perhaps best understood through the prism of the state’s highly distinctive major metropolitan areas. Five large metro areas span the state—Allentown, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Scranton—and together account for 63 percent of Pennsylvania’s population and 75 percent of its GDP. Their economic specializations are diverse: trade, transportation, and manufacturing in Allentown and Scranton; financial, professional, and educational services in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh; and government in the state capital of Harrisburg. While much political news coverage of Pennsylvania is likely to focus on its iconic small towns, it is really these large metro areas that define the state demographically and economically.

A slow recovery for most

While Pennsylvania was not one of the states hardest hit by the Great Recession, most of its major metropolitan areas bounced back relatively slowly. According to the Brookings Metro Monitor, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and Scranton ranked among the 20 slowest-growing large metropolitan economies from 2009 to 2014. All performed somewhat better on achieving increases in the local standard of living (prosperity), but Pittsburgh stood out for its 6 percent average wage growth during that time, seventh-fastest in the nation. This wage trend also seems to have propelled Pittsburgh to a better performance than other Pennsylvania metro areas on indicators of employment, wages, and relative poverty (inclusion). Allentown, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia, on the other hand, registered declines in typical worker wages during the first five years of the recovery and little to no progress in reducing poverty.

The picture over a longer timeframe is similar, though somewhat less dire. Pittsburgh posted middling growth but very strong performance on prosperity and inclusion over the past 10 to 15 years. That provided a contrast with Allentown, where the economy grew somewhat faster but productivity and average standards of living did not, and economic inclusion suffered. The remaining metro areas—Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and Scranton—all grew weakly but managed to post middling performance on prosperity and inclusion indicators.

Troubling racial disparities

Pennsylvania remains a whiter state than the national average, but its major metro areas are increasingly diverse, particularly in the southeastern part of the state around Philadelphia and Allentown. Nonetheless, Pennsylvania’s economic challenges are frequently framed around the plight of the white working class, which, as my colleague Bill Frey notes, comprises 59 percent of the state’s eligible voter population. In Allentown, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia, whites have indeed suffered long-term wage stagnation. Yet in the more manufacturing-oriented Pittsburgh and Scranton areas, median wages for whites rose significantly from 2000 to 2014. By contrast, workers of color have experienced much more troublesome wage trends, losing ground to whites in every major metro area. Across the five metro areas, typical earnings differences between whites and other workers in 2014 averaged between $10,000 and $12,000.

Reversal of fortune?

A look at the most recent job trends, from 2014 to 2016, suggests a shifting metro growth map in Pennsylvania. Over the past two years, Philadelphia and Harrisburg have posted much stronger job gains, Allentown’s average annual job growth rate has halved, and Pittsburgh’s job level has flat-lined. The state’s two largest urban centers frame this stark change. In every major industry category, average annual job growth in Philadelphia over the past two years outpaced its rate over the previous five years. In Pittsburgh, on the other hand, job growth slowed—or turned negative—in nearly every sector. The recent energy price crash has halted a fracking boom that buoyed the western Pennsylvania economy through much of the recovery, at the same time that Philadelphia is enjoying a surge in professional services and construction employment. Fittingly, Donald Trump used Allegheny County, outside Pittsburgh, as the backdrop for one of his first post-primary campaign stops, while Philadelphia’s economic momentum will be the background of the Democrats’ argument for another four years in the White House.

The Pennsylvania economy is thus not easily characterized, and the attitudes of its voters are likely to be shaped by regionally specific short-term and long-term trends. Those trends seem sure to keep the Keystone State’s electoral votes and U.S. Senate seat highly contested over the next several months.

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https://www.brookings.edu/2016/06/02/the-skills-supply-chain-must-change-as-software-eats-the-world/The skills supply chain must change as software eats the worldhttp://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/172286282/0/brookingsrss/topics/usstatesandterritories~The-skills-supply-chain-must-change-as-software-eats-the-world/
Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000http://www.brookings.edu?p=99637&preview_id=99637 in 2011, but now most people get the drift. Digital technologies are transforming the design, development, and delivery of everything from movies to manufacturing to ride-sharing.

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The observation that “software is eating the world” has become a truism. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen was early when he made his famous quip in 2011, but now most people get the drift. Digital technologies are transforming the design, development, and delivery of everything from movies to manufacturing to ride-sharing.

However, not enough has been said about what software means for workforce development. Waves of tech have been radically changing what workers do, yet neither the workforce system nor company human resource departments have adequately responded.

With digital technologies transforming firms’ talent needs, employers continue to say they are struggling to locate not just high-skill software and data professionals, but also digitally-literate line workers. At the same time, universities, community colleges, and career technical education programs struggle to keep up. Much remains in flux, both on the supply and on the demand side of the talent equation.

Which is why the Metro Program, in partnership with Kettering University and the Mott Foundation, convened its latest advanced industries regional workshop last month in Flint, Mich., at Kettering, one of the nation’s earliest bastions of highly applied, experiential engineering education.

At Kettering, Brookings brought together two dozen industry executives, entrepreneurs, educators, training-system officials, and economic development people to tour Kettering’s hands-on learning labs; discuss developments in “digitization” with a focus on Michigan’s increasingly high-tech auto sector; and explore a variety of training-system responses to the talent needs of industry. Much ferment surfaced during the day’s discussions, but by day’s end a short list of key insights came to mind.

Here are five takeaways:

Software really is changing everything. The feeling in the room at Kettering was that the immediate and long-term implications of digitization for skills acquisition are more, not less, profound than typically assumed. “It says something” that the second largest exhibition booth at the recent Hannover Messe in Germany, the world’s largest trade fair for industrial technology, was occupied “by Microsoft, a software company, not an industrial company,” observed Helmuth Ludwig, the chief digital officer of Siemens PLM Software, at lunch. And from there Brookings and several industry speakers listed more indicators of change. Brookings Research Analyst Siddharth Kulkarni discussed forthcoming research that quantifies the rapid spread of computer and electronics knowledge through essentially all industries in the last decade. (Since 2010, more software and computer jobs than mechanical engineering jobs have been posted in the Michigan manufacturing sector!) And Raj Nair (pictured), the chief technical officer of Ford Motor Co., put a finer point on it. Alluding to Brookings data that reported that 40 percent of the cost of a new vehicle now consists of electronics and software content, Nair noted that some 10 million lines of code in the Ford Hybrid Fusion process 25 gigabytes of data in an hour. “You can’t be a mechanical engineer without knowing software today,” noted Nair, “and because 95 percent of the manufacturing process is automated, the people who work on the line are also highly trained technicians.”

“Hard skills” are critical, and digitization has created genuine supply and demand challenges. To be sure, economists continue to debate whether major skills gaps exist in the aggregate economy (given that wages have barely increased). However, the employers and training providers gathered last month had no doubt that filling specific roles requiring specific skills is often difficult, and nowhere more so than in the digital space. On this front, several attendees attested to the fact that strong industry demand and limited historical production of STEM and tech skills in Michigan has created very real demand and supply tensions focused on specific “hard skills” such as software development, computer systems analysis, programming, and database administration. In step with Brookings data, the workshop participants lamented that in-demand skillsets are the hardest to obtain in Michigan and stressed the need for better “block-and-tackling” to produce them. David Milbourne, Alcoa’s vice president for talent management, spoke of the company’s need for specific hard skills in computing, math, additive manufacturing, measurement, and materials science. Mary Gustanski, vice president of engineering and program management at Delphi Automotive Systems, described Delphi’s need for and difficulty in finding more applied and “less theoretical” software engineers. And Dennis Dio Parker of Toyota Engineering and Manufacturing alluded to Toyota’s insistence “for competitive reasons” that every factory floor worker possess a specific “technical core” of professional competencies, including in electronics, robotics controls, circuitry, and digital learning. “We have to focus in detail on exactly what’s needed in talent coming into the company and whether potential workers have it,” said Parker. “I will say we are having a difficult time procuring the talent we need because, first, there’s not enough of it now and second, we need that talent to be more talented, with more specific skills.”

“Soft skills” are a problem too—and aren’t just about showing up for work. Frequently the soft-skill discussion among industrial companies sticks mostly to basics like attendance and initiative. At Kettering, though, the fact that the manufacturers in the room saw their companies in part as software companies elevated the soft-skill conversation. Nair noted that digitized auto products require “a lot more coordination and cross-domain teamwork” across technologies and disciplines than traditional old-line manufacturing. Robert Vogt, the chief technology officer of Voyomotive, LLC, an app-based connected-car company, stressed the need for “passionate” developers rather than perfectly trained engineers who “keep one eye on the clock all day.” And Milbourne talked about seeking the “innovator’s mindset” in hires—not just a feel for teamwork and communication but also for creativity. “We are really asking ourselves, `How do you get from the model T to the F-150?’” Milbourne said, adding that “it’s a huge question for us, `How do you get that innovator’s mindset into the company’s DNA?’” Milbourne believes new technologies require more and different types of coordination and a greater degree of creativity in workers.

Confronted by these issues the nation’s advanced industries talent supply chain is being challenged to deliver new kinds of value in new ways—and so it has entered a period of flux and experimentation. In this regard, several of the workforce system leaders in attendance acknowledged that the process of educating and training individuals and then connecting them to the world of work has not evolved to the same degree that technology has transformed firms and industries. They acknowledged that universities and community colleges have struggled to keep up the skills and competencies digitizing employers need in part because there are still too few industry-college training partnerships. And yet, as Kettering President Robert McMahan observed: “Numerous models are being tested and numerous experiments are underway.” In that regard, Kettering University itself stands as a timely model to the new needs. McMahan described how Kettering has leveraged industry ties to link rigorous technical training to interlocking experiential learning through the school’s well-known co-op model. “Kettering couples theory and practice right away—and very tightly,” McMahan said. More specifically, the afternoon panel of education and training leaders highlighted several models of tech-responsive training practice. Terri Sandu of Lorain Community College in Northeastern Ohio described how Lorain has sought to immerse itself in the local tech ecosystem by teaching in-demand skills and exposing students to the full range of needed skills, including entrepreneurship. Sandu noted that the college has created its own start-up accelerator, which serves the local economy and also gives students experience to the “entrepreneurial feel” of today’s tech-infused workforce. Parker, for his part, reviewed how Toyota led the design and scaling of a highly rigorous co-op and apprenticeship program for new workers in, first, one company (Toyota) in Louisville; then in multiple companies across the Louisville-Bluegress region; then in 85 companies across Kentucky; and then in 165 companies across eight states. By contrast, Will Brick, the general manager of TechShop Detroit, noted that “maker spaces” like his are breaking from convention to develop an improved talent pool, including by providing an unstructured “intake point” for “passionate tinkerers.” Brick related how TechShop not only has a relationship with Ford aimed at stimulating creativity among Ford workers, but that the public workshop helps connect creative amateurs to employers, thereby helping to locate talent with an innovator’s mindset. And finally, Paul Perkins, the president of Amatrol, Inc., a leader in competency oriented e-learning for technical skills, noted that high-quality interactive training—if tied to competency based credentialing—seems to resonate with young, internet-native workers “particularly if it incorporates elements of gaming and simulation.” Perkins believes competency based e-learning could facilitate tailored, “infinitely scalable” training. In short, the group gathered in Flint described a moment of proliferating, productive experimentation in the training systems, coinciding with a moment of flux within firms. Or as observed Mike Hogan, the associate dean of STEM programs at Central Piedmont Community College in North Carolina: “Companies are still figuring out what digitization or Industry 4.0 means for them and we need to work with them.”

For all of the one-off experiments there’s a huge need to scale them. Ultimately, the promising individual models on display in Flint—while encouraging—also prompted frustration. How will the sound responses coming into focus be scaled to equal the nation’s massive, increasingly digital talent needs? In this vein, Allyson Knox, the director of education policy and programs at Microsoft, silenced the room by asking how many students the group thought took the Advanced Placement computer science exam last year in Michigan and then supplied the answer: only 900, including only 20 Hispanics, 16 African Americans, and 110 girls. To Knox those stark numbers implied the kind of response needed. Noting that only 71 (out of 1,575) high schools in Michigan offer an AP science course, Knox declared:“[We should] find one big thing and see if we can move the dial on it” and nominated a national scale up of computer science training in high school. Shortly after Knox’s proposal, other workshop participants suggested other routes to more systemic scaling. Elaina Farnsworth, the CEO of Mobile Comply, a workforce training and credentialing firm in the “new mobility” industry, called for stronger regional collaboration efforts aimed at creating industry relevant training pathways. And Brookings Vice President Amy Liu alluded to promising industry-educator cluster initiatives in various regions and suggested they be multiplied. She and others seemed to be asking about how to resolve a colossal set of collective-action problems that plague the education and training worlds.

*

In the end, the discussion at Kettering clarified that the “software-ization” of the advanced industry sector is beginning to generate exciting responses across the worker-training community. The question now is: How can those responses be scaled? How can they become ubiquitous?

The Alcoa Foundation is a donor to the Brookings Institution. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions posted in this piece are solely those of the author and not determined by any donation.

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When I formally joined the economic development field nearly two years ago after serving as deputy chief of staff to Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, and after 10 prior years in the private sector, I knew it was about job creation and business attraction, retention, and expansion. I also was warned by a friend in the field that “economic development” could mean just about anything depending on who you asked and who needed to borrow the term for his or her cause. All of the above has turned out to be true.

But, as Amy Liu describes in her recent paper, “Remaking Economic Development,” economic development in the 21st century is very much evolving toward a more rigorous, sophisticated approach to strengthening regional markets and expanding opportunity. Reflecting today’s increasingly competitive global knowledge economy and the fact that over 80 percent of state job growth is created by expansion of existing businesses and start-up activity, economic development today is as much or more about talent attraction, place-making, innovation, and global engagement as it is about company recruitment.

Mayor Fischer recognized that shifting paradigm early in his administration as the city worked closely with Brookings on a metropolitan business plan and regional economic growth plan with the neighboring city of Lexington and the surrounding 22-county super region. Export and foreign direct investment planning efforts also helped inform new thinking.

This evolving definition prompted a fundamental reorganization of regional economic development. In 2014, Louisville launched a new integrated economic and community development entity, Louisville Forward, ending a long-standing outsourcing arrangement for business attraction, retention, and expansion and pairing business development functions with the city’s real estate, land use, planning, and design activities.

One of the immediate outgrowths from that work was a focus on talent development as an element of economic development. We reconstituted our workforce investment board and integrated their staff in our work to better link labor supply and demand and provide a trained workforce for employers in many fields. Louisville has had a longstanding initiative to increase the number of residents attaining two- and four-year college degrees, but our scope has now expanded to include certificate programs, given the important role they play in quickly meeting the changing demands of employers. As a result, we now have best-in-class credentialing programs in advanced manufacturing and coding.

The new structure has also changed the focus of many of our other programs. By aligning our built environment team with our business development staff, we are working together to create a quality of place that will attract a talented workforce. We have also changed our incentive awards to focus on high-wage jobs, and offer incentives to companies willing to locate in, and hire from, distressed neighborhoods. By looking at median wages rather than average wages, we have gained deeper insights into both individual projects and our economy at large.

The big frontier for remaking economic development is metrics. Despite discussion and experimentation underway in the field—including Brookings’ recent Metro Monitor examining measures of economic growth, prosperity, and inclusion—economic development still generally measures itself along three basic data points: number of jobs created, total dollar investment, and the number of new projects. There is nothing wrong with those measures, and Louisville still competes in the top 10 nationally in that regard.

But real economic growth is much more complex and requires deeper measurement. We must continue to evolve incentive structures to ensure that we are really benefitting those we seek to lift up. We know that we have recovered from the Great Recession, but we also know that many citizens aren’t reaping the benefits of that recovery.

As economic developers, we must be willing to remake the way we do our work and the way we measure it to ensure that all have an opportunity to prosper—a successful economy depends on it.

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https://www.brookings.edu/2016/03/25/is-the-media-letting-you-down-lately-your-odds-look-good-in-las-vegas/Is the media letting you down lately? Your odds look good in Las Vegas.http://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/173379014/0/brookingsrss/topics/usstatesandterritories~Is-the-media-letting-you-down-lately-Your-odds-look-good-in-Las-Vegas/
Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000http://www.brookings.edu?p=105515&preview_id=105515John Hudak discusses his rare and enlightening experience that shed light on how this nation's youth will help transform the media industry.

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Last week, I got to feel absolutely hopeful about the future of America media. This rare experience made me reflect positively on how this nation’s youth will help transform the Fourth Estate.

As part of the Brookings Mountain West partnership between the Brookings Institution and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), I made a trip to Southern Nevada to meet with community leaders, present ongoing research, and, most importantly, teach a few courses. At Brookings, I don’t have too many opportunities to work with students, surely not as many as my friends and former colleagues who teach regularly at universities.

For this trip, my colleague Bill Brown, the assistant director of Brookings Mountain West, saw an opportunity. He was familiar with my recent project on explanatory journalism and believed the project offered a great opportunity to reach out to faculty in UNLV’s journalism and media studies school to see how the topic resonated with them and their students. I delivered a guest lecture to three classes that gathered for the occasion: reporting, photojournalism, and communications. I also spoke to an advanced reporting class in a forum that functioned as a press scrum on any topic relevant to my research. Finally, I appeared on a political news show on UNLV-TV, allowing me to see the professionalism of UNLV students on both sides of the television camera.

To say I was impressed with the students, faculty, facilities, and the overall level of talent would be an understatement. The students were engaged, thoughtful, prepared, and well-versed on the topics relevant to each discussion. Unlike the typical stock questions I get asked every day, their questions were probing and pushed me to do more than regurgitate talking point-style answers.

Instead, they made me think.

Most importantly, many of the students expressed the same frustrations with certain aspects of media that you hear from the rest of the public. The students’ explicit desire to improve the media’s capacity and delivery of the news was not some wide-eyed, idealistic refrain from a group of kids, not yet jaded by the industry’s realities. Instead, the students discussed the challenges, incentives, and structures that have produced the current state of media in the U.S. They sought answers about how to overcome each of those realistically, personally, and as a group.

I was in no position to deliver answers, but the UNLV students certainly are. They are young professionals trying not simply to hone their craft, but to improve the news industry. Often on this blog, our desire to try to fix what ails American government manifests by overemphasis on what is broken, and the fixes prescribed are internal to government operations. In reality, media’s ability to address some of the biggest challenges facing the current system is vastly understated. The next wave of young journalists sees addressing those challenges as part of their mission.

UNLV is not alone. Journalism schools all over the U.S. are training astute, forward-thinking, reform-oriented professionals who will eventually help transform media models, styles of reporting, and the means by which the public receives information. What was most inspiring about UNLV’s journalism and media studies program and its communications program was to see first-hand a group of students who are thinking in precisely the right way about changing the industry and what role they can play in that transformation. They are thinking both big and small about the future, and they do so not from a lofty perch provided by a long-pedigreed university program.

These students also have an organic springboard to make these changes happen. They are hardworking students, many of whom are first generation college students, being trained in an exciting media market. Las Vegas provides these students multiple centers of the news universe. The students live and work at ground zero in U.S. presidential elections, with the third and final presidential debate scheduled for the UNLV campus in October 2016. Their homes and jobs are in a swing state, in a large metro that is a global hub for tourism, gaming, and conventions. As a rapidly growing and diversifying metropolitan region, Las Vegas represents the next generation of American cities. No longer willing to be a tired cliché, Las Vegas has evolved from its gambling origins to develop additional economic sectors including retail sales, fine dining, alternative energy, drones and autonomous vehicles, health care, and more.

Take all that with the region’s track record of producing some of media’s rising stars like The Atlantic‘s staff writer Molly Ball (an alum of the Las Vegas Review Journal and Las Vegas Sun) and Washington Post‘s Amber Phillips (a Las Vegas Sun alum). These students are positioned to do well, not just for themselves, but for their industry and the communities in which they do and will work.

The next class from the UNLV journalism and media studies program is not going to single-handedly cure the problems facing media, politics, and society. But the lesson I took from my latest trip to Southern Nevada was a heartening one. The next time you criticize media, the next time you write off millennials, the next time you think a group of public university students can’t take on a system littered with problems, take a trip to Las Vegas and chat with the young professionals at the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs. If these students are the ones we’re wagering our future on, I’ll take the over.

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https://www.brookings.edu/2016/03/24/want-to-reduce-the-influence-of-super-pacs-strengthen-state-parties/Want to reduce the influence of super PACs? Strengthen state partieshttp://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/172289652/0/brookingsrss/topics/usstatesandterritories~Want-to-reduce-the-influence-of-super-PACs-Strengthen-state-parties/
Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000http://www.brookings.edu?p=105506&preview_id=105506Super PACs and other lightly regulated political organizations are dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into American elections. What should be done about it? In this post, Raymond La Raja and Jonanthan Rauch offer a compelling and easily achievable solution: strengthen state parties.

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Super PACs and other lightly regulated political organizations are dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into American elections. What should be done about it? Unlike many candidates for federal or state office, so-called independent expenditure groups face no restrictions on how much individuals and groups can give to them. And thanks to several federal court decisions, including Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, independent groups can spend unlimited amounts to influence elections. The public understandably worries about the political clout of wealthy groups—especially since donors often can hide their identities.

Reformers have proposed various remedies: disclosure rules, the appointment of a liberal Supreme Court justice to reverse Citizens United, even a constitutional amendment to overturn that decision. Those long-shot strategies, however, are unlikely to create the kind of small-donor democracy that many reformers seek. Money, like water, will inevitably flow into the political system. Laws can’t do much to reduce the amount of money in politics; what they can change is where the money goes.

An easier path to improving politics

In our new Brookings paper, The State of State Parties, we suggest an easier path to improving politics—one that is right under our nose. Strengthening state political parties can help offset the clout of super PACs.

Our study, based on a survey of 56 state-party organizations plus detailed interviews with 15 of their leaders, points to the distinctive and constructive role that state parties play in American politics. In an era when politics seems to be spinning out of control, party organizations are among the few actors that seek to integrate and balance interests—for instance, by recruiting candidates with broad appeal, by playing honest broker among contending partisan factions, and by building coherent strategies among campaigns up and down the ticket. Party organizations also generate a lot of grassroots activity to mobilize volunteers and voters.

How regulations on parties increase super PAC spending

State parties are among the most heavily regulated entities in American politics, a situation that diminishes their influence relative to non-party groups. For instance, the vast majority of state parties face restrictions on the source and size of donations, and some contribution limits are unrealistically low. In Massachusetts, no donor can give more than annual aggregate of $5,000 to all local and state parties. That’s a paltry sum in statewide elections that can easily cost $55 million, including $20 million in independent expenditures.

Super PACs and other groups naturally fill the vacuum because they do not have to contend with limits on raising and spending money. Often, outside groups effectively drown out the parties. In our survey, only half the parties said they advertise on TV and radio sometimes or often, usually because they lack the resources to do more.

The figure below shows that parties’ independent spending is miniscule compared to the growing expenditures of non-party groups over the past five election cycles. In the 2014 election cycle, the parties accounted for just six percent of total independent spending in the states for which we had good data.

An especially significant finding is that restraints on political parties seem to amplify the activities and influence of outside groups. As illustrated in the table below, 65 percent of respondents in states with contribution limits to parties said that independent groups sponsor more than half or almost all political ads, compared to only 23 percent in states without contribution limits.

In other words, independent spending is significantly lower when parties are not limited. These differences translate into electoral clout. In states with contribution limits, 65 percent of respondents said independent spending is often a key factor in gubernatorial elections, while fewer than half said the same in states with no limits.

Correlation does not prove causality, but our findings provide strong circumstantial evidence that when you restrict the parties, you get more independent expenditures by non-party groups.

It’s not hard to strengthen state parties

We recommend changes to strengthen state parties and restore them to a place of prominence in campaigns. First, state governments should raise or eliminate contribution limits so the parties can acquire sufficient resources to compete with outside actors. This would allow state parties to serve as clearinghouses for campaign money, which would bring more “dark money” toward accountability and transparency.

Second, parties should be allowed full freedom to coordinate their activities with their candidates and allied groups. This would make them more valuable to candidates and would allow the parties to perform their irreplaceable role of supporting candidates across the party ticket.

We also suggest giving parties favorable tax treatment so that donors are more likely to give to parties than candidate-sponsored super PACs or interest groups. We also recommend other regulatory changes that would encourage parties to do more grassroots work with voters.

Loosening the constraints on state parties would not stop the flow of money into politics (nothing can do that), but would channel more of the money to accountable actors. That’s why we think of this solution as building canals, not dams. And the incremental steps we propose require no sea-changes in public opinion or heroic legislation. In fact, they command support in both parties’ establishments, making them a good starting point for reform. That’s why we conclude that strengthening state parties is a realistic path toward a better balanced, more effective, and more accountable political system.

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This benchmarking study, developed by the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, provides the Greater Charlotte region with a framework and data to better understand its performance and position in the global economy, offering information and insights to help leaders more actively shape the region’s economic strategy.

Through comparative benchmarking against 19 other global city-regions, this analysis finds that Greater Charlotte’s overall economic growth has been robust over the past decade and that its economy is very globally engaged. Exports and foreign direct investment account for a larger share of its economy than any other U.S. peer metro area, led by tradable anchors like machinery, transportation equipment, and financial services. But this same comparative lens reveals a region at risk of losing ground to peer metropolitan economies unless it shores up its competitive drivers, especially given its reliance on sectors that must compete globally.

While it houses key advanced industries, the region must build up its relatively low innovation capacity and expand entrepreneurship. It must help employers overcome their challenges in filling job vacancies, especially occupations that require STEM skills. And it must address lagging broadband internet connectivity and bridge income disparities in broadband access. In addressing these areas and others, Greater Charlotte’s should continue to work through regional networks of public, private, and civic leaders to design, deliver, and execute its global economic strategy.

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The rise of Donald Trump as the odds-on favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination may play havoc with the familiar political map of red and blue states in November’s election. Much has been made about Trump’s potential success in previously Democratic leaning and older mostly white Rust Belt states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But Trump also has the potential to lose a number of previously Republican-leaning or swing states in the South and West. The latter outcome has both a demographic element—the continued rise of Democratic-leaning minorities, Hispanics, blacks, and Asians in a number of Sun Belt states—and an enthusiasm element: possible unprecedented turnout among Hispanics and other minorities to voteagainst Trump and in favor of likely Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Such a contest, pitting the demography and enthusiasm of partisan voting blocs against each other, might be most evident within the state of Arizona. Granted Arizona has been a solid red state that voted for Republican presidential candidates in 15 or the past 16 presidential elections (the exception was 1996 when the state voted for Bill Clinton in a three-way race). But its longstanding conservative mostly white electorate has been countered by an increase in predominantly young Hispanics. Between 1990 and the 2010 censuses, its Hispanic population grew by 175 percent and the white share of its total population declined from 75 to 58 percent.

In many ways, Arizona epitomizes what I have described as a “cultural generation gap” at the root of this year’s presidential campaign. Already the primary campaigns have placed in sharp relief the conflicting views of an older mostly white electorate (and heavily Trump voters) with minority voters who tend to be younger (Clinton and Sanders voters). Immigration is a key wedge issue. A Pew survey showed that more than half of white baby boomers and seniors believe that increasing numbers of newcomers from other countries represent a threat to traditional American values and customs—a view not held by younger minorities. It is central to Trump’s signature promise to build an impenetrable wall on the Mexican border, but it generates backlash among minority groups.

This issue is especially salient in Arizona where the demographic fault lines are sharp. Because of the state’s continued draw of mostly white retirees from other parts of the country and its sharp gain of youthful immigrants and U.S.-born minorities, the state’s over 65 population is far whiter than its child population (82 percent versus 41 percent). Arizona leads the nation on this contrast which reflects both culture and race. (See charts for its two largest counties, Maricopa and Pima counties). Unsurprisingly, immigration is an especially divisive issue. When the well-known Arizona state Senate Bill 1070 authorizing police to check the immigration status of people stopped for other reasons was proposed in 2010, it was favored by 61 percent of whites but only 21 percent of Hispanics, 62 percent of those ages 55 and over, and 45 percent of those under age 35.

Arizona’s racial and age divide has played out in presidential elections as well. In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney took 66 percent of the state’s white vote and 71 percent of those aged 65 and above. In contrast, Democrat Barack Obama won 74 percent of the Hispanic vote and 63 percent of those under age 30. Overall Romney took the state 54 to 45 percent, and this reflects the demographic rub in Arizona. While minorities now comprise well over four in 10 of state’s residents, many of those minority residents are too young to vote, not citizens, or not registered. Thus in 2012, whites comprised fully 65 percent of eligible voters, and because of low minority turnout 72 percent of Election Day voters were white.

But as more Hispanics and other minorities reach voting age, Arizona’s demography is changing rapidly and, in the current election climate, minority enthusiasm may be as well. Recent estimates suggest that minorities could comprise nearly 40 percent of Arizona’s eligible voters this year—of which two-thirds are Hispanics. Moreover, greater enthusiasm could increase Election Day turnout of eligible minority voters from a weak 44 percent in 2012 (compared with 62 percent of whites). With a substantial increase in Hispanic and other minority turnout, the percent of whites voting on Election Day could be reduced to 64 percent of voters. This would still provide a stiff challenge for the Democratic candidate because, even with larger numbers, those minorities would have to vote nearly 80 percent for the Democratic candidate to make Arizona a blue state in November. Yet it is possible, and it would represent a prime example of a demographically emerging voting bloc showing its strength by voting against a candidate they fear instead of in favor of one they embrace.

In the near term, the biggest issue these regions face can often simply come down to identifying where the problems exist. More than a century old in some cases, pipes with the most pressing maintenance needs can be difficult to identify, as the risk for widespread leaks and other public health concerns mount over time. Meanwhile, the lack of timely updated information can extend well beyond lead service lines in places like Flint, making it difficult for utilities and other stakeholders to address wastewater upgrades, groundwater levels, and related water needs simultaneously.

In turn, public, private, and civic leaders frequently need to have better regional measures at their disposal to drive more efficient and equitable infrastructure improvements.

Of course, developing and applying any new metrics is easier said than done, especially given the difficulty in estimating local water needs with varying levels of regulatory oversight. Still, there are a number of steps that regions can take now to more precisely define their infrastructure gaps:

Likewise, by producing more detailed metrics and visualizations of the infrastructure itself, regions can pinpoint needs in specific neighborhoods or even at individual addresses. For example, the Boston and Water Sewer Commission has created a lead service map, revealing what properties in the city have private lead service pipes.

Encouraging more frequent and consistent testing also holds promise, particularly when it comes to detecting pollutants and other areas of concern. Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Lead and Copper Rule is perhaps the most notable example in this respect, where requiring more stringent testing—from the EPA to states to localities—can better safeguard all water users.

At the same time, emphasizing a range of drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater needs is crucial, even when focusing on concerns over lead and similar pollutants. Regions are adapting to a variety of population pressures, climate fluctuations, and other challenges, which is driving the creation of new resilience strategies and measures in markets from Norfolk to Chicago.

Finally, empowering consumers and stakeholders to voice their concerns can help spread new information. Flint’s crisis has elevated the importance of water as a national priority, largely driven by the efforts of researchers and local residents.

While the magnitude and urgency of the nation’s water challenges have steered greater interest in a federally led solution, states and localities remain at the forefront; they cover more than three-quarters of all public spending on water infrastructure and will likely need to play a bigger role in years to come through more coordinated leadership, more targeted investments, and increased technological innovation. Having clearer, more consistent metrics can accelerate these efforts and build momentum for future improvements.